ironside1966

[quote name='bigjohn' post='862036' date='Jun 9 2010, 01:13 PM']I slate DM without ever having used it I don't see the point of using a model of something no matter how accurate (which is where the conjecture surely lies) when the real thing is readily available. Real valve preamps aren't heavy. If I wanted to create a sound I couldn't get with a valve or solid state pre I'd be all for DM though. I just dont! It's the poweramp bit where I get interested. That said, I have been tempted by those little TC Electronics things recently.[/quote] I can think of quite a few Size Cost Versatility Live: To get the sound of the you are hearing you need to mic up the cab; a slight movement of the microphone can change the sound. Less chance of a bad engineer ruining you sound. Consistency. Don’t need to play as loud to get the sound you want. Studio: They are just so small and versatile Don’t need to be so loud Great for home studios Silent tracking Re-amp, record a dry signal and you can always reamp later great for getting you out of a hole even if you have recorded a real amp.

[quote name='dood' post='861955' date='Jun 9 2010, 11:46 AM']I think this hits the nail on the head. As a sweeping statement *most* musicians are not techno geeks and thus expect to twiddle a few knobs and sound like SRV. However, modelling just doesn't work like that - infact even big valvey amp stacks don't either. The POD *can* sound amazing in the right hands - but a lack of experience - or indeed a lack of reading the manual in the first place will only grace you with a turd to polish. I would quite happily turn up to a studio session with just a POD (X3) - because I am confident that I can get the tones I want from it and you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between live or model. - oh and finally, none of the sounds I use are stock ones... Eeeeesh!!! - I'd rather get the POD with no default sounds on! lol[/quote] The only people I know that slate DM are the ones that never get passed the presets On the downside some guitarists I know say they are great but just don’t react to their playing or feel like a real amp but it is not far off.

[quote name='TPJ' post='859993' date='Jun 7 2010, 03:34 PM']Used a TNT through the late 80's into the 90's and I have a Database still lying around somewhere. The two I've used have always been reliable, the Database was bloody loud, both gave a decent tone.[/quote] I used a Peavey Databases for years got loads of great comments about the sound, a sound that always worked in the context of any band.

[quote name='fxpedal.co.uk' post='857941' date='Jun 5 2010, 08:37 AM']We have the Studio 110 in stock and, as a member of Basschat, we'd love to look after you. Other alternatives would be the EBS Classic Session 60 which we also have in stock or, as has been mentioned, Hartke which we can supply too. Feel free to get in touch and we can quote you prices which you should find very competitive. Richard[/quote] Hi Thanks I am in no hurry but very interested if you want to PM me with some prices, would you say the EBS has more usable clean volume then the line 6 I don't want to go much larger in size.

Although I will probably use this for recording I still have my gig stored under the stairs, it is too big and loud to use in the house, too heavy to and a pain to move. I just record with the odd singer songwriter often arranging a band and playing bass, a couple of hour’s rehearsal save double in the long run and get a better performance. I do the odd gig but I am not that bothered. Thanks to Happy Jack for his kind offer

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='855990' date='Jun 3 2010, 12:39 PM']The other thing is the improvement in PA's and monitors. We can be quieter on stage if we want and let the PA do the work. Hence all the metallists discussing 2x4x10's versus 8x10 whilst others pursue the ultimate lightweight solution. We are in the great situation of having choice so long as the rest of the band let us.[/quote] I agree the reason I have a thing about loud amps is that a live engineer for a long time and very loud musicians are the pain of your life

[quote name='JTUK' post='855169' date='Jun 2 2010, 06:12 PM']All depends on what you have to do... £100 a man min for a function and it goes up as the time spent there increases. Weddings start at £700 for a 2 hour set because you generally have to write the day off for them..pretty much. But..... it is all very well saying what you want for these type of things...you need to be value for money.[/quote] Bands come in all styles and abilities but the truth is not all bands have a value of £100 a man but it is not a lot for a decent band

[quote name='dan670844' post='854792' date='Jun 2 2010, 01:10 PM']Its all to do with speaker efficiency and the amount of surface area you have on the speakers. You can easy gig with 100 watts if you have speakers that are sensitive enough and you have enough surface area. That was the era of the massive stacks (i.e. lots of speakers). High sensitvity speakers need less watts to move so are much more efficient with the power, the problem is they are expensive to make and tend to blow quite frequently. Another point is how the RMS figure is measured. Most modern amps have there RMS quoted at 1Khz for example. A lot of older stuff in Particular the old Trace / Marshall/ Ampeg stuff the RMS figure is quoted across a frequency range. Which means that they can deliver their watts down as low as 100hz or so. This is why noobs are always amazed at how loud an old AH300 is. There is a big difference between 300watts at 100hz and 300 watts at 1Khz as the low freq takes a lot more power to create. Noone can ever say that an old SVT with its puny 300watts through its high sensitivity 8x10's isnt loud. It will literally take you head off on full bore and would be far too loud, and I cannot really see a call for so much volume in any application these days with house sound. Also everyone wants deep full bass from tiny little boxes these days, that you can do but you need a lot of power to get these modern long excusion drivers moving enough to generate the bass that you want at a sensible Db rating. The 60's and 70's era rock band was loud and I mean spine tingly hurting loud, you will never see that level of heavy bass again due to health and safety!!! A few years back I saw Black Sabbath at a private warm up gig in Aylesbury civiv centr, as it was a closed show Geezer had his old SVTs cranked, that was so loud it literally made you ribs rattle, if anyone else made it there they know what I mean! ................nice[/quote] Good point well made I do suspect that they massage the figures to make them more consumer friendly. Power amps are now rated at 2 ohms but only the best will not overheat after a few minuets . Compare a Vox AC 30 to a Laney S S amp what a difference

This is a very large area some bands charge at between £2000 and $4000 +, others a couple of hundred pounds some play for free. For venues the value of a band is not how many people you are it is how much you entertain or the revenue you bring to the venue put it simply a solo singer who fill the venues is worth more than a 12 piece band who don’t bring any one in. If they work through an agent he will probably set the price of the band, if it is too low change agents if it still too low change the act or work your way up to better fees as an established act will charge more. My advice is to do their home work find out what other bands are charging who are of a similar stranded and playing similar gigs. The question is not only how much the charge but how often do they work

I know some say the sometimes you had to use the EQ to bring the sound forward rather than the master volume but that is what sound engineers do all the time

Thinking of getting a Line 6 LowDown 110. I need to rehearse with a few different bands I am not expecting miracles but I do not want to work with bands that are not sensible with the volume. Will this amp work for and are there any better alternatives? Size, it needs to be small as it will be stored in my studio and there is far too much stuff in there already. It needs to be light I cannot lift much because of health reasons, size is more important. Price I don’t want to spend more then £400

Are old amps louder or are bands playing louder nowadays? In the seventies and 80’s very few bass had above 200w but few complained. Is it that the old gear was big and heavy and more efficient? I understand that some people want Hi tones which take up more head room.

Good band and good bass player. When the lady was talking it seem like you where soloing over her which I found a bit rude, but that only my opinion. good work

Remember you are not going to get the physical movement of air with standard studio monitors so be realistic. Experiment with mic placement, try moving the microphone further away, and try facing a second microphone at the port. Try using saturation plug-in (they are not only for distortion) As the last post said it is what works in the context of a mix not in isolation.

[quote name='Mykesbass' post='850640' date='May 28 2010, 08:39 PM']I'm no expert but this interseted me so had a quick surf - apparently you should avoid magnetic fields greater than 5 gauss - Seymour Duncan pickups are around 25 gauss! I would check with your consultant - hope all goes well![/quote] I had a 3 lead one fitted a year ago, I asked the surgeon if I playing the guitar would be safe, although I did not state electric, and he said I would be ok but give it a month to let the leads attaché themselves properly. PS, what a strange sensation when the made the pocket

This post gives the Impression that you do not have the experience, skill or attitude to work in a successful full band on a world tour. This is not personal so as I don’t know you and you may have the relevant skills, all I am just saying you are not selling yourself very well.

[quote name='supabock' post='751978' date='Feb 20 2010, 05:41 PM']Does anyone here use Cubase VST Version V (or others), and have you experienced compression when recording clean bass directly through the input of your soundcard on the PC. Just curious to find out if its my soundcard auto compressing for some reason or something within cubase in the audio/ input settings?[/quote] I would say it is your card, or somthing other than cubase What card is it? PCM recording will round the bits of Less so at 24 bits, a pasive bass stright into a sound card is the wrong Impedance so you may need a DI box.

[quote name='bigjohn' post='751120' date='Feb 19 2010, 05:07 PM']Loud does not need power. Loud needs enough power and a sound made up of particular frequencies. You can make a 2W transistor radio sound "loud". People say "turn that down, it sounds sh!t". I totally agree that a 100W bass amp can be EQ'd to sound "loud". But you've got to agree that a 1kW amp can be driven hard and not sound "loud". ie, if you're amplifying lower bass frequencies, you need a lot more power than you would to produce mid bass frequencies to create the same dB.[/quote] I totally understand that Watts and SPLS are not the same thing What is important to a bass amp is the amount of clean power so you can get a good balanced sound without distortion once this can be achieved at the volume of a loud drummer why do you need any more volume and once a band starts hitting 105db then it’s time to turn down. I have worked and seen many bands that play at frightening volumes and if you gave them louder amps they will still turn them up so having more power is not a good thing. I believe that for every doubling of watts there is only a 3db difference and to double the volume the wattage needs increased tenfold so quality efficient gear over size and power or one good speaker is better than two bad ones. Going back the original thread is there any point to bigger louder amps? No because most amps are loud enough

[quote name='bigjohn' post='751060' date='Feb 19 2010, 04:14 PM']legal and safe levels of noise have nothing to do with the power being used to create it though does it? you can make 10kW amp inaudible if you use it to create noise which is below or above audible frequencies. I'm comfortable with 4,5,600W as I know I won't have to EQ to make my bass more audible. I use the EQ to get the tone I want, then turn it up to make it audible. That's the point of having a loud amp for me. It means you can actually use the EQ for what it's for (tone shaping) rather than bandpassing to avoid clipping the poweramp. Even with some 300W combos I've used, I've found myself EQing more mids and treble to the point where the sound of the band suffers. That said, I've got a super efficient 150W combo that does the trick, but it's heavy and large.[/quote] May be you or your band play too loud and thats why you need a bigger amp

[quote name='bigjohn' post='750875' date='Feb 19 2010, 01:30 PM']I've never had a dose, had favours from an amp nor any trouble that would require a helping of Pele's keepy uppy tablets. I'm currently using putting 600W (with the gain at about 7/10) into a schroeder 1212L for pub gigs. It's not that loud. In fact, at the last gig we did, I was asked to turn it up. It would be loud if Eq'd differently. Big fat loud sound would require less power. Flat to a little mid scooped with a flatwound strung jazz with the tone rolled back requires quite lot of it. Not so long back I used a 100W bass amp for a gig, people who came to both that one and our last gig, with the big rig, all remarked how much better the band sounded, basically because I wasn't crawling all over the guitars with an amp EQ'd to be heard over the drummer.[/quote] This is a good point that a lot of musicians play to the power of their own amp, if the bass guitar could not compete with the volume why didn’t everyone else turn down. I have nothing against large amps but speaking with my sound engineer’s hat on, musicians and bass players need to play at reasonable levels even without a PA and a reasonable quality and efficient amp and speaker of 150 watts is capable in most cases, it seems to me that modern gear has more power but is less efficient or the ratings quoted are at 2 ohms. Sorry to be boring but the legal and safe level of noise is well below the volume of what most bands play at Low frequencies use the most headroom in an poweramp

Done many gigs both large and small with a 150 watt amps and I remember a time when 200 watts was considered aloud pro amp never accrued to me that I did not have enough headroom. I used a 450watt Peavey databass for years never got it past 4 and the main reason I bought it was because it was considered small at the time. I totally understand headroom having worked with PA’s for a long time but what worries me about the 1000 watt brigade is do you turn it down and play within reasonable volumes because I have met many who don’t. Dose the big fat loud sound with tones of punch work within the context of the band? In a pup gig with a small stage large gear as a large footprint. How big and loud dose an amp need to be before it gets silly? Would a smaller amp do you more favors? What’s more impotent your sound or the bands?

Getting a good sound is down to the band, first you need good clean arrangements so that the instruments are allowed their own space and are not cluttered by every one competing for the same frequencies. Next the sound of the individual instruments needs to work well together, when all the band members want a big larger than life sound for their own instruments the band generally sound a mess, good bad or no sound engineer. The bass carries so you can hear the bass end in a crowded room long after the mid and top end is gone and the bass is generally louder further away from the speaker. No one needs to be louder than the quietist instrument Lastly wattage is virtually meaningless as there a two many variables, eg, the efficiency of the amp and speaker IMHO the super stack is the equivalent of having a 4 by 4 for a townies school run.

I don't get the big loud amp thing at all unless you play stadiums regular or other big stages, if you have a PA then let that do the work and bands or musicians who play too loud make it nearly impossible to get a good sound. If you have just a small PA for vocals all that will happen is you drowned out the drummer and the singers anyway, music that is too loud damages your ears as well as the audiences.

Don’t see the fuss myself, T & T sections for me is about improving your playing tabs can help. If the mods see fit to place them in T&T IMHO it is the right place, even if it is not whatever you do someone will complain, if they break everything down into sub forums to keep people happy where will it end the whole site will become a nightmare to run and mess to read. Keep things simple understand that this forum caters for everyone. This site is voluntary contributions only, no advertising you can buy, sell, trade, for free and has great people who give good advice for nothing and people still complain Keep things simple and understand that this forum caters for everyone.

[quote name='Oscar South' post='738076' date='Feb 7 2010, 01:38 PM']Thank you, I'm glad someone got the point of this thread. Should have seen it coming really[/quote] Let me expand Studying other chops is an important part of musical development whether it is a sex pistols line or a Charlie Parker sax solo both come under T&T, bit of snobbery if you ask me, this Forum is for bass players of all levels and tastes lest keep it that way.